My GA-P35C-DS3R HACKINTOSH

Posted 17 April 2009 - 01:37 AM

glenesis

InsanelyMac Protégé

Members

38 posts

Gender:Male

Location:New York

Well, I did build another Hacky, and many more since then. One day, maybe I'll get around to documenting all of them.

My main axe is built around a Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R motherboard, and I'm simply in love with it. I've been using it for around a year and a half. I've had it successfully running a Q6600 overclocked to 3.5gHz on air (yeah, really) with no problems and no temperature problems at all. I literally lucked into the correct settings and a cpu with a REALLY low V-Core of 1.25, and I'm running with it, and not looking back at all.

The specs are simple enough:

Main Board: GA-P35C-DS3R with the latest BIOS, F12e

RAM is 2gb of Patriot RAM, details hereand 4gb OCZ Fatality RAM, details here - I added it later, cos I got it on sale, and I was really lucky that it didn't break my overclock when I added it. The RAM specs match closely enough to the original Patriot RAM.

The CPU is an Intel Q6600 with the G0 stepping, SLACR, with a VCore of 1.25

The case is a quiet Antec Sonata III tower.

The CPU cooler is an Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro, and it dropped my operating temperatures around 10 degrees Celsius lower than the stock Intel cooler. I love this thing. The installation was easier by far than the stock cooler, as well. I heartily recommend this thing.

The video card is 256mb nVidia 7300gs from XFX, running great with nVinject.

I have it stocked full of Western Digital Green Terabyte drives with the 16mb cache.

Once I updated the BIOS, the machine would take any installation disc that I could throw at it. AHCI works, IDE works, sleep is kind of messed up, and shutdown works under 10.5.5, and intermittently with the other OS versions I tried. It's all fine under Tiger.

I originally ran with Kalyway 10.5.1, and eventually updated to 10.5.2 by following the guide by PCWiz, now downloadable here. Out of the box, everything worked except for sleep, shutdown, internet, and sound. The fixes are all documented in his guide. If you need help finding any of them, drop me a PM, and if I can, I'll help. PCWiz was personally a great help in getting this machine off the ground with OSX86, and I thank him deeply for swift and detailed replies when I needed help. So much of the community gave me so much assistance; I'm forever indebted to you all for your help.

These days, I run iDeneb 10.5.5, patched with the control center by PCWiz.

Initially, iDeneb 10.5.5 was great on my machine, but eventually, the Voodoo Kernel proved to be incompatible with some things, and I switched the kernel back to the 9.2.2 SleepKernel.

The only real problems that I have had with software compatibilty seem to be problems with 10.5.5, not with the iDeneb package. Anything that I have run into in the way of a problem has occurred on my MacBook and my friends' real Macs, as well.

If I was not so entrenched in 10.5.5 with installed applications and plugin suites for my audio work, I would switch back to 10.5.4 via Kalyway 10.5.1 vanilla. It was rock solid, and I am sorry that I upgraded.

That's that about that.

Following are my BIOS settings that I used to run at 3.5, a modern miracle. The list is as complete as I think it need be. There are some power management settings that may or may not be pertinent to the stability of my overclock. I really am running this thing with a 2.4gHz Q6600 overclocked to 3.5gHz, just take my word for it. I'm not bragging, I have no need to brag, and I really don't care whether you believe me. I just want to share the information. I am running at 3.5gHz, and my temperatures don't range far off the mark from between 34 degrees Celsius and 38 degrees Celsius. In a nutshell, for the OC pros out there, I loosened the RAM timings to 5-5-5-18, and pushed the voltage of the RAM til it met spec (2.2v), so that it showed me 2.2v on the PC Health page of the BIOS. I picked up the CPU voltage til it was stable (many attempts here), but within the voltage spec listed on Intel's website for the chip. MCH is up .1v as well, which seems to be a big contributor. PCI frequency is locked to 100mHz.

Here are my BIOS details, as I recently typed them up for a friend:

Ready? In your BIOS, you can save a preset for your current settings. Do it.

Following is a list of the settings that might be pertinent to my success:

*Note - i had to play with my voltages for months to arrive at this balance of numbers. After I read about loosening up RAM timings to 5-5-5-18 to facilitate Over-Clocking, everything else fell into place. Check in your PC HEALTH screen after every re-boot, and see that your RAM is running at the RECOMMENDED voltage that it specs from in the factory specification. That seems to be a major key to getting sick speed. Also, the Q6600 normal voltage range goes up over 1.5, so, you aren't nearly cooking the chip at 1.375, and Mac OS seems to like the voltage very much with that chip. It's a voltage-hungry OS.

I have got to say that of all of the systems I've built since I got into this Mac OS On A PC Thing, this machine has by far been the most fun to play with, and to actually use.

Just for the record, I some of the hackies that I've built and installed for other folks are built on the following motherboards:

GA-945GCM-S2CGA-945GCMX-S2

Both are stable. I've built 2 of the S2C machines. It seems to like iAtkos 10.5.4 the best. The S2 is happily chugging away under good old reliable JaS 10.4.8!!! I LOVE YOU JaS!!!